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6'7 & green-skinned, can't you tell? Geeky feminist. Blogger. Social Community Manager for Moz. GeekGirlCon alum and a founder.

Blog Bio:

I'm Moz's Senior Community Manager! You may run into me doing my best Roger voice, working on MozCon, or reading your questions on Mozinars. I *heart* our community. In my spare time, I review a lot of comic books and tweet about geeky stuff.

Get a front-row experience for all 28 sessions, plus their slide decks, with the 2014 MozCon Video Bundle. Bringing you future-focused advice and actionable recommendations from some of the industry's most innovative minds, MozCon topics range from SEO and A/B testing to analytics and content marketing.

Conferences can be spendy when you add up ticket costs, travel, hotel, meals, and more. It's important that you can justify a positive ROI when it comes to your budget. Find out the value and costs of your MozCon ticket.

We've launched MozCon 2013 tickets! Join us July 8th-10th at the WA State Convention Center in Seattle to celebrate and launch your inbound marketing skills into outer space. Early bird tickets are going quickly.

Editing your own writing is the worst part of writing, no matter your profession. In today's Whiteboard Friday, our very own Community Attachè shares her tips for turning the arduous process of editing into something beautiful.

Good things come to those who wait, and you've all been waiting patiently for our new Mozinar series. We're happy to announce that our Mozinars are back and better than ever. Best of all, they're now free for everyone!

MozCon 2012 tickets are here! Join us for a three day deep-dive into advanced search engine optimization, social media, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, analytics, and more. Early birds get the best priced worm!
"MozCon is like Disneyland for SEOs, jampacked with super-geeky SEO Magic Tricks, and great chances to meet and say hello to others in the search industry." -- Pete Campbell

Google+ has crept into SERPs near you. From getting hyper-personalized results popping up everywhere to recommending people to follow or showing you results you've +1'd or posts you've made, Google+ isn't giving you the choice to ignore it. Instead, embrace the win-sparkle of personalization.

Holy smokes, I don't think our product and development teams have slept since Thanksgiving; they're probably really dreaming of figgy pudding with all the new features they've been creating. These four features: universal search, historical link metrics, custom reports, and branded keywords are definitely squee-worthy. Plus, there's a bonus that you might've not heard about yet.

We're not quite sure when the next LocalUp will be. (But stay tuned as we'll announce that here!) But you should definitely check out our partners Local U as they put on Local SEO conferences all over the United States.

Yes, we will be recording the main stage sessions. We will be selling the videos afterward. The videos alone will be cheaper than a ticket (though videos are included in ticket price), so if you can't make it in person, wait for those sales. :)

What Keri said, Dana is just an amazing community member who's been around since Moz's early days. :) Dana owned her own SEO consultancy business.

Yes, Moz does provide full coverage for medical insurance.

I do know that Dana has health insurance. However, in the US, we have the highest medical costs in the world, and for almost every health insurance option, it doesn't cover everything. Some insurance pays out a certain percentage, or a certain amount, or requires you pay up front a certain amount before it kicks in, or has rules for certain types of treatments. Dana's in-home health care worker is not covered at all by her insurance, and not all her other medical care is either.

For example, recently I went in for a check-up, and my doctor was worried about some vitamin levels. The normal blood work and my check-up was 100% covered by my insurance; however, the further blood work was not and I had to pay for it. In my case, it was like $60 or so, but you can imagine that if I needed the level of care Dana needs post-accident that my expenses could quickly grow beyond what I could afford.

Jen has been at Moz for 6 years! She started out as an SEO consultant, and when we started making software, she decided to stay on and try out this community thing. Back in the day when there was only one, Jen managed all the things: Q&A, Main Blog, YouMoz, all the comments and thumbs, social media accounts, events, Associates, etc. Even though the community was smaller than, you all kept her very busy.

With an entire team, Jen's current responsibilities are:

Managing all of us!

Advocating for the community and community projects internally at Moz.

Sharing about the power of the community to the greater world.

Helping us get all the stuff done by approving budgets and prioritizing our projects.

Worth noting that the like most technology companies, the majority of Moz entire's staff is actually male. The community team is actually an exception. By my rough count, women make up slightly more than 1/3 of Moz's staff. (Not everyone's on the company page, btw.)

Best moment: All of MozCon, every single second of it! I love celebrating face-to-face with our community and being part of the team that produces MozCon. Also that video we have of Ronell singing Itsy Bitsy Spider from MozCon. :)

Worst moment: Sifting through anonymous "feedback" from MozCon that's trolling, rude, or straight-up offensive as if no one actually reads it or it's read and report on and report to robots. :( To be fair, this is a small minority of feedback, but still incredibly jarring and unfun.

This comment made me smile. :) Thank you for your kind feedback about Mozinars and how the quality of decks has been improving. I do have to say that I'm looking forward to being able to give this checklist to the speakers that I work with.

Glad to be helpful for your future speaking engagements. You can do it!

It does highly depend on the kind of situation you're in, and you can make it super short. :) It's most important that speakers don't come across as wholly self-promotion. It's good to practice your elevator pitch about yourself too, if it's appropriate to intro yourself. I think people get rambley when they don't know quite what to say. :)

I think we've all seen presentations where the presenter went on too long about themselves or their company. Or you thought you were getting a how-to and were blindsided by something closer to a sales presentation.

Ah, yes, I often find that a list broken down into separate slides can be clicked through at the speed you would go through it as a list, so it doesn't end up saving you anytime. Time is a huge thing in presentations. (I see a future blog post!) Practice and figuring out exactly who is your audience is and what information they want at what level of expertise is really key.

I think it's much harder to use Prezi effectively. I do think it's worth being empathic to your audience who might have issues with motion sensitivity. (Think about how many people you know who won't go to a 3-D movie!) At Moz's events, we had one MozCon speaker use Prezi, and it wasn't surprising that her background was building products and UX.

I love when speakers create a second Sharing version of their decks for SlideShare and other post-conference distribution. I know Ian Laurie is someone in our industry who does this often. I've done it a couple times, and it's been pretty effective.

You can also add a further resources slide where you list articles for people to dive further in-depth in and tools that you might've mentioned.

:) Indeed, you always want to deliver the best information through your words and reinforce them with the presentation. Practice of presentations is so important for that extra polish layer. Unfortunately, I think that a lot of people keep fussing with their decks until the very last second, and forget to let their decks settle and think about how to move through the speaking part of the talk.

It's pretty unlikely that the old posts are still getting traction. Most posts essentially "die" within several hours of being posted, so you're likely not going to see any returns on your efforts by going back through them to delete and replace old URLs with the the new one. In this case, I'd delete those old posts and start anew.

So I asked our paid marketing folks at Moz, and they said that you'd likely have to spend 20K+ a month, depending on your industry's vertical, to get a rep. That said, in the ads manager, there's a way to connection with reps with questions about ads, and this would be a possible way to get in front of someone's eyes. Best of luck!

We were able to chat directly with an account rep (via ads) and secure our shorter name. Ironically, we no longer have a rep there, so if we were doing the rebrand again, we'd very much be in the same situation. I know one of the reasons they want a longer brand name is to make searches better or less cluttered. Sorry I couldn't be of more help!

It really just comes down to a purely business decision of how many people they want retain from their current channel. If it's a small number, they might be better starting from scratch. If it's a bigger number, they probably don't want to do that. It also might depend if, say you can email blast everyone who you want to move to the new channel. There's no clear-cut answer as it really depends on the business needs.

Hi Anant -- Unfortunately, Facebook has no bulk way to get rid of "likes" that you bought and are just spammy accounts. You can unfollow them 1 by 1, but we've had community members who've tried this and then Facebook has temporarily blocked them from doing this at all. So...there's really no method at all.

That said, Facebook just did a bunch of tweaks to their algo, and you'll find that, even if you have 100% legit organic "likes," you will only see around 3% engagement because that's all the people that Facebook's showing your information too. Unless you pay them.

Glad to hear that your experiences in the industry have been very positive based on your gender. I definitely agree that age and "attractiveness" associated with youth can be another sticky point in our industry and society. Which as you point out, all of us age.

Thanks for sharing your personal experiences. I completely agree that things get even harder as you move up (or attempt to move up) the ladder. I can believe someone literally slammed a door in your face. Best wishes for success in breaking down those doors (though hopefully not literally).

That's amazing to hear that you've had great experiences overall in this industry. I completely agree that there's a great network out there of women mentors and men, who are also very supportive. I wish this was everyone's experience. However, your experience is pretty unique compared to many women I network with, who are all over the place in time spent in this industry.

Also, while I've avoided talking about my personal experiences (as this post is influenced by, but not about them), I know that I look "young" and you probably don't know me from any other random SEO/online marketer -- someone's stranger is always another person's friend or industry "celebrity" -- I have been working in online marketing as a professional for 8+ years and building websites for my own fun for 15 years.

Hi Nathan! So this is not an official count by any means, but I'd guess there are somewhere around 20 people over the age of 50 at Moz with ~140 employees. When I first started at Moz, we were a very young (25-35) crowd, but as we've grown this has changed a lot. :)

The industry survey did indeed collection age demographics, which were bucketed. Unfortunately, we didn't do any breakdowns based on age in our summary, but you can download all the raw data from it.

I do believe Chiaryn is speaking to experiences working on our customer support team at Moz. Part of being TAGFEE means that we need to deliver critical feedback and also that the Empathy triumphs a lot. While I cannot speak for Chiaryn's experiences, I know we have ended conversations and in rare cases dropped customers who were being abusive to us.

Thanks, Steve! I love hearing about how how successful other conferences in our space are also getting better and working to gender parity. I will say, while I see women speakers receive gender biased scores as a group, it is improving. It is changing. That gap is closing.

Crowdsourcing posts are tricky. When it comes to experts in the industry, a lot of them get many requests daily to share their thoughts on various issues in our industry. A couple things to think about:

1) How is my question phrased? How open-ended is it? Is it too broad? Will this take too much time?

2) How is my outreach done? Am I approaching only friends? Do the people I'm asking know who I am or are familiar with the blog? Have I asked way more people than needed? If I know women respond less based on past experiences, have I asked enough women to compensate for that?

3) Have I messed up in the past? Do women realize I've been yelled at by the community for not having articles featuring any women? Has there been something similar which just happened that might make them feel tokenized at the moment?

Honestly, in my years of doing speaker work for MozCon (3 MozCons), I've never had a speaker push back and ask if they were there as a token or charity case. I think there are a lot of factors: MozCon's reputation as a conference; MozCon's reputation for gender balance; I'm a women; etc. in my favor.

I agree that in many ways we appear to be in a "good shape" but with some peeling back of layers and digging in, there are still many biases (conscious or unconscious) as it's hard work to remove them or not fall back on easy stereotypes, like making something for boys blue and something for girls pink. (In fact, those stereotypical colors used to be the opposite and only changed during WWII.)

One of the articles I shared at the bottom of this post was called "death by a thousand cuts" which is really about those microagressions of not feeling welcomed or sensing a dislike that while it may not be (though can be) outright discrimination are signals. Sounds like you had more than a few in Montreal.

Yes, mentorship is so important. It's great the little ways you can sneak it into what you'd otherwise have as just your daily routines.

I'm also always in awe of people who are great facilitators of meetings or discussion groups. Those who really take the time to make sure that everyone's voices are heard, which this professor sounds like a terrible one. At Moz, we don't face, as much, of not hearing women's voices, but we do work with a lot of introverts, and I appreciate when the meeting facilitator makes sure that those people have the time to state what they're thinking about.

Thanks for bringing up non-English languages. English is interesting because while we don't assign gender to everything like the romance languages do, at least when addressing an individual person as gender neutral there isn't an official pronoun. People, mostly started by transgender and genderqueer activists, have started using "they" as a workaround. However, outside of US colleges, I'm pretty sure students are still being taught to use "he or she" or "s/he" instead of "they." (I cannot speak to the experiences in non-US English-speaking schools.)

I do think, such to your point about "donna" and "ragazza" is very interesting. I'd definitely say that it's not a hard and fast rule across languages, but is very important in English. It actually made me think of my own very basic Italian classes that I took many years ago and the nuances of that which were not explained. I probably made some women feel older than their age.

As always, thanks for your support, Sarah. Part of the reason I love working at Moz is because we're always questioning how to get better, no matter how uncomfortable or bias-exposing those questions may be.

So I'm only going to address your third point about Hillary as the rest of them are really "but you forgot to mention the men and their struggles" which is derailing and I addressed your comment about motherhood/maternity earlier.

(BTW, the reason I asked for your advice is because it's a bit of the mission of the Moz blog to share knowledge freely, and while I understand that we have a living to make off that knowledge, the question was aimed to get further discussion of an important issue, not get free advice when it should be paid for.)

The reason I want to address Hillary is because, while yes Kerry and Dukakis get made fun of as all politicians do, they get made fun of in a very different way. Hillary has long been looked at by many from the point-of-view of sexual objectification, and usually the comments are negative, but still sexual objectification. Most Americans, particularly those attracted to women, have basically been asked by the media (due to the preoccupation with the Clinton's sex life) if they would ever sleep with Hillary, if they were in Bill's shoes would they have cheated, would they have divorced, would they continue to have affairs, etc. In most cases, when a couple has issues due to cheating, this is a very private, often very embarrassing personal matter. But this was not. And while Hillary has gone on to do many remarkable things on her own right since then -- state senator and secretary of state -- a lot of people can't move on to judge her as anything but a sexual object (or a fashion icon as her role as first lady). No matter how you feel about her politics, when those who insult Hillary first reach out to how ugly and not sexually desirable she is (to them), this is problematic. Those who insult male politicians do not have the same sexual objectification, even if their fashion is lightly laughed at. In the US, we are not a nation who's asked ourselves if we desire Kerry or Dukakis because it's not relevant to if they are competent politicians.

Thanks, Simone! Yes, role models are so important, especially in careers. I love to hear that you're actively working to mentor the next generation and making sure different types of people are represented in those role models. Keep up the great work.

Yes, going against evolution and seeing ourselves as biased (or less than perfect) is hard work, soul-searching work. I definitely make it sound a lot easier than it is. It can feel like shit when you're an otherwise well-meaning person and you realize -- either through feedback or just your own learning -- that you've been giant biased-jerk. I also 100% agree that in groups vs in private discussions can be quite different, especially depending on personality types. It's much easier to laugh along or agree with the group in confirmation bias than challenge it.

You are very correct that I did not touch on issues of motherhood or maternity. I wanted to touch on areas of marketing without delving too much into the structures of companies, HR, and the like. I believe that strides in equality concerning motherhood and maternity often lie in flexible workplaces, offering daycare, maternity/paternity leave, good health care options, etc. For example, it was a shame when Melissa Mayer took away Yahoo! employees ability to work from home and then installed a nursery for her child next to her office, a luxury I'd guess most Yahoo! employees who are parents do not have.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on things we could do better for mothers or pregnant women. Thanks!

I wish that when I talked yesterday about this article with some women in our industry I highly respect that two of them did not almost immediately share negative stories. Or I wish I could not see trends like women speakers at MozCon rating more poorly than male speakers and more. I wish I did not have my own stories like the women I chatted with.

Thank you for your comment and your work in our industry. While I won't leave my CV here, I believe we started building websites right around the same time.

We definitely have different point of view on the issues of sexism and tech and how to approach them. And it's great to hear that your personal experiences in this industry have been very positive with support from all people. I wish this was the case for everyone. That is my wish.

I do not believe that pointing out sexism will cause things to get worse for women in tech. Nor does it make women weak to point out these systems. Sexism, along with any other -ism, is a fact of our culture. Our dominant Western culture is based on thousands of years of human history where cisgendered straight white able-bodied men have essentially been the champions riding on the backs those who are not all those things. We may consider ourselves enlightened because women and ethnic minorities have the vote or that slavery is illegal, but many of the systems we function in and use every day reflect our histories and those biases.

I take issue with your derailment of the issue by asserted that I'm male bashing or that men are somehow harmed by my article or any other article addressing concerns of women and minorities. I really enjoy this comedy routine of Aamer Rahman's from Fear of a Brown Planet on "Reverse Racism" as it illustrates how those reflected in dominant culture (in this case white people) aren't harmed by even jokes from comedians meant to make fun of them.

While I highly disagree with most all your points -- justice isn't blind, journalists should be covering hard topics for us as this is the function of journalism, etc. -- I do ask that you do a little more research before attempting to derail the discussion by calling my participating and experience into our industry into question. I am not a journalist.

I suggest reading some of the resources surrounding experiences of women, like the #yesallwomen hashtag.

Thanks, Sam. I too miss general interest newspapers and when you could easily find news not targeted toward your own demographic. I know when Ferguson was at its heights, Facebook was not showing me that it was breaking news, and my guess would be that it's because I'm a white women living in Seattle. As an American, I also know that our news is very US-centric. (My British friends have often complained about this when visiting.) And I take it very much as my own responsibility to find people who are not like me to connect with.

Unfortunately, we aren't able to offer streaming options for our live events. It's actually much tricker than most people think to get the kind of quality that we would want to (as we would charge for the streaming). We will be recording the event, and we will be putting them up online.

Thanks everyone for being part of our wonderful community and our journey! :)

Some Mozzy things that have brightened my life over that last 10 years:

- Taught me how to be an SEO through educational resources from 2007 through now.- On my 3rd try, employed me. :) I'm celebrating 3 years at Moz next week!- Enables me to co-run and brings me joy in developing MozCon every year since 2012.- Met my partner at a Moz Wine Friday. =D- Allowing me to learn and grow in my career.- Still challenging me (and everyone else) to be better marketers.

To answer specifically about the Moz social tools, I know YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest are in the top for the next adds. (No ETA on this.) Unfortunately, LinkedIn lacks any kind of API to pull metrics, so we won't be adding LinkedIn until they change that. :(

So as someone who puts on conferences, I highly suggest if you want a conference in your area to do it. Create it. Invite speakers and your community. Just do it. That was how I did my first conference. There wasn't one in of the type I wanted anywhere so I did it with the help of others. It was very rewarding and amazing.

You should also build in ways -- in your platform -- to showcase voices that might get buried by the loud minority or make sure you (community manager) are creating spaces or topics for not just the loudest.